Kanata no Astra – Episode 6

First of all, thank you to last week’s commenters for contributing some theories and some hints! Reading them really enriched my perspective. I realized I was wondering things, but also trying to keep myself in the dark purposely, maybe? Either way now I’m thinking more actively about what the future may hold for the crew and the reasons behind what’s happened to them. Thanks!

A lot of the reveals in this episode were a little expected, but pretty exciting nonetheless. The pacing seem to have quickened increasingly and the tension keeps rising. Ulgar was my least favorite character and I think it probably still is. I don’t think he’s bad or anything, but I figured with his personality, that he would have a pretty uninteresting backstory and honestly, he kind of does. A typical revenge storyline. Well, sorry for comparing Ulgar to Sasuke, guys, but… he comes to mind, okay?

Now Luca’s reveal was very exciting because I was wondering about that. At first I couldn’t tell if Luca was a boy and he’s a little ambiguous in presentation, but I got used to thinking of him as a male pretty quickly. After the reveal he did appear more feminine at times though, a conscious choice of the director, I assume. Either way, I liked how these two characters could build a bridge between each other through mourning how unloved they are by their parents. It’s also nice that as they were talking, Kanata and Zach were looking for clues as to why they could have been placed in this situation and what they had in common.

Even with the cliche backstory, I must admit I’m easy and Ulgar’s story did touch me a bit, specially when he realizes his revenge, the one he’s been preparing for for years won’t be realized in Luca. His frustrated and sad screams almost made me cry. The tsunami was also very predictable after the earthquake, but it gave the characters yet another disaster to bond over, finally claiming Ulgar as one of their own after they had been trying to win him over since the beginning.

I really like that they casually bring up things about the characters that become relevant things for them to be able to reach a goal. Kanata’s regret over losing his teacher of course will make him strong enough to not lose Ulgar now. Aries’ photographic memory makes it easy for her to pick out Charce’s lies (?) when he says he’s in the biology class. The episode ends in quite the cliffhanger too, although now that Ulgar has been cleared as the enemy, Charce is fair game as a suspect. Quitterie, Zach and Funicia all know each other and Charce doesn’t have any connections to the rest. He’s also super nice all the time which is more suspicious to me than the lone wolf character, but I’ll have to wait a week to find out how the story develops.